In his Open Letter to American Undergraduates which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for August, Mr. Arnold Whitridge voiced his indignation and consternation that so many younger citizens should oppose American intervention in Europe. This is a sentiment with which we have become very familiar in the last few months. We heard it at commencement time, we have read it in irate letters from prominent alumni, and we have seen it on the editorial pages of Eastern newspapers. But our efforts to weather this storm of protest have been reenforced by the knowledge that for once we of the ivied walls and cloistered walks are in agreement with the great majority of Americans of all ages. In fact, we cannot see why Mr. Whitridge has challenged the loyalty and faith of undergraduates while he has not questioned the ideals or courage of his contemporary opponents, from Herbert Hoover to John L. Lewis. However, since he has been gracious enough to clothe his indictment in question form, he should be answered; though it is just as impossible for us to speak for all those who would have to fight this war as it is for Mr. Whitridge to represent all those who fought the last one.

As Mr. Whitridge has noted, people of our age are reluctant to parade their ideals in public. This is partly so because we know the inadequacy of words and have seen righteous phrases so often used to hide selfish expediency or to misguide sincerity. Also, we took it for granted that our ideals were part of a faith common to all Americans, and we still think so. But if we are asked 'Where do you stand?' we cannot reply without trying first to make clear the beliefs underlying our position.

The basis of these beliefs, and presumably of Mr. Whitridge's, is a regard for the value of human beings and a respect for their inherent dignity. For all the impersonality and standardization of our time, we believe that individuals have an intrinsic importance which transcends their wealth, their physical value, or their usefulness to us. In short, we think that man is an end in himself. The rest of our political and social ideals are built on this estimate of the individual. We care about those ways and forms which give people the greatest scope for their full development. Specifically, we believe in the concept of freedom because it allows each person to realize his own particular potentialities. We believe in the institution of Democracy because it permits all to take part in shaping the common destiny.

Almost everywhere now except on this continent these beliefs are abstract ideals only, if they are allowed to be thought of at all. Because we are citizens of the United States, they are more than that for us. Our nation is the only one which has been dedicated to these ideals from its origin. Ours is the only nation whose entire population is made up of people who are citizens because they or their ancestors repudiated hate and oppression in order to live by these principles. And thanks to our size and resources we come nearest to being nationally self reliant. Therefore, while we know that these ideals have not been fully realized for millions of Americans, still we are more aware than ever before that we have a better chance of achieving them here than anywhere else. This conviction, as well as our natural allegiance, compels us to put the United States first in our loyalties.

We acknowledge the challenge to defend America in the Americas as the test of our patriotism and courage. But we can by no standard accept the defense of England as the automatic measure of our loyalty to American ideals. The cause of one's own country comes before that of another. We do not condemn Englishmen for feeling the same way in the case of Ethiopia, China, or Spain, but we do claim that same right to put allegiance to our own nation above all else. Mr. Whitridge's conclusion that this means we 'have no sympathy for the Allies' or 'condone the crimes of Germany' is unfounded. It would be just as unfair for us to conclude from Mr. Whitridge's interventionist stand that he cared more for England than for his own country. Such casuistry and acrimony seem to us as unworthy as they are unjust.

Just as our allegiance to our own country comes before our sympathy for Britain, so too our idealism does not permit us to betray the principles themselves merely for the thrill in what Mr. Whitridge calls 'defying horror and in enduring the rending of the heart.' In simpler terms, we reject the glorification of war in itself. Perhaps there lies the greatest difference between us and our German contemporaries, whose highest ideal is Blut und Ehre. We will not fight just for the sake of fighting; but convince that war is the best means of serving our American ideals and we will follow anywhere.

Here, essentially, is the question at issue: Can we best preserve our American can ideals by entering the war abroad? Those who insist that the issue is one of difference of faith and degree of courage are avoiding the question. Those who condemn the use of reason and historic experience as 'arrested skepticism' are merely hindering us from arriving at the right answer.

Whatever the answer, the prospect is not pleasant. On the one hand there are the consequences of total war. On the other we are faced with the consequences of German victory in Europe. And just as no one can claim that his answer holds a pleasant promise, so nobody can pretend to know with any certainty what may happen in either case. The situation holds too many imponderables to allow anyone to set himself up as an omniscient prophet. We can rely only on our own interpretation of the present and our estimate of future probabilities.

Weighing the alternatives in the light of what little we have to go on, we hold that there is a greater chance of maintaining our American ideals by refraining from active participation in the war abroad. Intervention has from the outset seemed to us a fantastic military proposition. For immediate action we have nothing to fight with which would substantially alter the European situation. By the time we could be ready for effective action, war against Germany would mean an attempt to conquer a whole continent dominated by a nation whose entire stock of men and material has been organized for military ends for the past seven years. We should be committed to a transoceanic war of aggression with no end in sight.

And what of the things we should be fighting for? Democracy and freedom would obviously have to be scuttled. That would not matter so much if there were some prospect of their restoration after the war. But even if we had the promise of the men in power, conditions would make the return of democracy impossible. We have not yet recovered from the scars left by our last effort abroad, little as it was in comparison with the demands of victory under present circumstances. We see no hope for believing that the gigantic task of national demobilization and reconstruction after a prolonged total war could be accomplished, if at all, by democratic scans.

And most of all, intervention seems to us a fantastic moral proposition. The lesson of the last war writes too plainly the fact that out of the devastation and hatred of wholesale war does not come any promise of a fair peace or a lasting order. What is there to lead us to believe that, even if we were victorious, we should not have to face the resurgence of old prejudices and the creation of new ones beyond our understanding and control, all of which would mean another war in a generation or two? The basis of all our beliefs the respect for the inherent value and dignity of the individual would be lost the world over in the impersonal brutality of war.

The alternative, we admit, is not pleasant to contemplate. If we do not light now and Germany is victorious, it means that we shall be stripped of our outposts in Europe and shall probably have to withdraw from the Far East. It means that we shall not be able to count on the British fleet. In short, we shall be left alone without support outside of this hemisphere. Even here our job will be made more difficult, for a cartelized Europe would be able to offer more trade to South America than we could. By the very nature of the situation, we should have to rely on ourselves alone for our survival.

Yet we choose this course of nonintervention. We take our stand here on this side of the Atlantic, precarious as it is, because at least it offers a chance for the maintenance of all the things we care about in America, while war abroad would mean their certain extinction. We would not say that there is a good chance merely that there is a greater chance of preserving American democracy by keeping out of war. Even if you dismiss the possibility that Germany would not want to dominate us, all is not lost. We have the moral advantage of the defensive position. We have the superior strength of resources undrained by the demands of total warfare.

Our stand here does not mean a submission to 'the technique of nonresistance, which implies accepting a Nazi-dominated universe.' Rather we insist that America make itself strong enough to repulse any invader who might attack. It may be that our youth gives us an unreasonable faith in what America can do. But when we see all that man has achieved in science and industry for private gain alone, we have grounds for believing that America can save itself by calling upon the tremendous material resources and human genius for production which have made this nation the industrial leader of the world. Of course, national defense cannot be a money making proposition. Similarly we cannot count on cooperation in South America without giving up the advantages of economic imperialism. And perhaps most difficult of all is the task of renewing faith in our ideals by making them real to more people. It cannot be done by mere words; it cannot be done by a national witch hunt in the name of Americanism. It can only be done by making democracy work. If we fail in this, we cannot hope to meet the Nazi strategy of 'divide and conquer.' We do not say we will do all this, we merely say that we can. Even then there is no guarantee of security. But we choose this effort and this risk, for in them we see the only possibility of preserving what now is in the most real sense 'this last best hope on earth.'

We are young. In the light of a greater inspiration or a higher wisdom we are ready to change our ideals or our conclusions. But we shall be shamed out of neither.

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Writing used to be a solitary profession. How did it become so interminably social?

Whether we’re behind the podium or awaiting our turn, numbing our bottoms on the chill of metal foldout chairs or trying to work some life into our terror-stricken tongues, we introverts feel the pain of the public performance. This is because there are requirements to being a writer. Other than being a writer, I mean. Firstly, there’s the need to become part of the writing “community”, which compels every writer who craves self respect and success to attend community events, help to organize them, buzz over them, and—despite blitzed nerves and staggering bowels—present and perform at them. We get through it. We bully ourselves into it. We dose ourselves with beta blockers. We drink. We become our own worst enemies for a night of validation and participation.

Even when a dentist kills an adored lion, and everyone is furious, there’s loftier righteousness to be had.

Now is the point in the story of Cecil the lion—amid non-stop news coverage and passionate social-media advocacy—when people get tired of hearing about Cecil the lion. Even if they hesitate to say it.

But Cecil fatigue is only going to get worse. On Friday morning, Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri, called for the extradition of the man who killed him, the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Muchinguri would like Palmer to be “held accountable for his illegal action”—paying a reported $50,000 to kill Cecil with an arrow after luring him away from protected land. And she’s far from alone in demanding accountability. This week, the Internet has served as a bastion of judgment and vigilante justice—just like usual, except that this was a perfect storm directed at a single person. It might be called an outrage singularity.

Forget credit hours—in a quest to cut costs, universities are simply asking students to prove their mastery of a subject.

MANCHESTER, Mich.—Had Daniella Kippnick followed in the footsteps of the hundreds of millions of students who have earned university degrees in the past millennium, she might be slumping in a lecture hall somewhere while a professor droned. But Kippnick has no course lectures. She has no courses to attend at all. No classroom, no college quad, no grades. Her university has no deadlines or tenure-track professors.

Instead, Kippnick makes her way through different subject matters on the way to a bachelor’s in accounting. When she feels she’s mastered a certain subject, she takes a test at home, where a proctor watches her from afar by monitoring her computer and watching her over a video feed. If she proves she’s competent—by getting the equivalent of a B—she passes and moves on to the next subject.

The Wall Street Journal’s eyebrow-raising story of how the presidential candidate and her husband accepted cash from UBS without any regard for the appearance of impropriety that it created.

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The piece begins by detailing how Clinton helped the global bank.

“A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the newspaper reports. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.”

There’s no way this man could be president, right? Just look at him: rumpled and scowling, bald pate topped by an entropic nimbus of white hair. Just listen to him: ranting, in his gravelly Brooklyn accent, about socialism. Socialism!

And yet here we are: In the biggest surprise of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, this thoroughly implausible man, Bernie Sanders, is a sensation.

He is drawing enormous crowds—11,000 in Phoenix, 8,000 in Dallas, 2,500 in Council Bluffs, Iowa—the largest turnout of any candidate from any party in the first-to-vote primary state. He has raised $15 million in mostly small donations, to Hillary Clinton’s $45 million—and unlike her, he did it without holding a single fundraiser. Shocking the political establishment, it is Sanders—not Martin O’Malley, the fresh-faced former two-term governor of Maryland; not Joe Biden, the sitting vice president—to whom discontented Democratic voters looking for an alternative to Clinton have turned.

During the multi-country press tour for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, not even Jon Stewart has dared ask Tom Cruise about Scientology.

During the media blitz for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation over the past two weeks, Tom Cruise has seemingly been everywhere. In London, he participated in a live interview at the British Film Institute with the presenter Alex Zane, the movie’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, and a handful of his fellow cast members. In New York, he faced off with Jimmy Fallon in a lip-sync battle on The Tonight Show and attended the Monday night premiere in Times Square. And, on Tuesday afternoon, the actor recorded an appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where he discussed his exercise regimen, the importance of a healthy diet, and how he still has all his own hair at 53.

Stewart, who during his career has won two Peabody Awards for public service and the Orwell Award for “distinguished contribution to honesty and clarity in public language,” represented the most challenging interviewer Cruise has faced on the tour, during a challenging year for the actor. In April, HBO broadcast Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear, a film based on the book of the same title by Lawrence Wright exploring the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise is a high-profile member. The movie alleges, among other things, that the actor personally profited from slave labor (church members who were paid 40 cents an hour to outfit the star’s airplane hangar and motorcycle), and that his former girlfriend, the actress Nazanin Boniadi, was punished by the Church by being forced to do menial work after telling a friend about her relationship troubles with Cruise. For Cruise “not to address the allegations of abuse,” Gibney said in January, “seems to me palpably irresponsible.” But in The Daily Show interview, as with all of Cruise’s other appearances, Scientology wasn’t mentioned.

An attack on an American-funded military group epitomizes the Obama Administration’s logistical and strategic failures in the war-torn country.

Last week, the U.S. finally received some good news in Syria:.After months of prevarication, Turkey announced that the American military could launch airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria from its base in Incirlik. The development signaled that Turkey, a regional power, had at last agreed to join the fight against ISIS.

The announcement provided a dose of optimism in a conflict that has, in the last four years, killed over 200,000 and displaced millions more. Days later, however, the positive momentum screeched to a halt. Earlier this week, fighters from the al-Nusra Front, an Islamist group aligned with al-Qaeda, reportedly captured the commander of Division 30, a Syrian militia that receives U.S. funding and logistical support, in the countryside north of Aleppo. On Friday, the offensive escalated: Al-Nusra fighters attacked Division 30 headquarters, killing five and capturing others. According to Agence France Presse, the purpose of the attack was to obtain sophisticated weapons provided by the Americans.

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

What is the Islamic State?

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.

Some say the so-called sharing economy has gotten away from its central premise—sharing.

This past March, in an up-and-coming neighborhood of Portland, Maine, a group of residents rented a warehouse and opened a tool-lending library. The idea was to give locals access to everyday but expensive garage, kitchen, and landscaping tools—such as chainsaws, lawnmowers, wheelbarrows, a giant cider press, and soap molds—to save unnecessary expense as well as clutter in closets and tool sheds.

The residents had been inspired by similar tool-lending libraries across the country—in Columbus, Ohio; in Seattle, Washington; in Portland, Oregon. The ethos made sense to the Mainers. “We all have day jobs working to make a more sustainable world,” says Hazel Onsrud, one of the Maine Tool Library’s founders, who works in renewable energy. “I do not want to buy all of that stuff.”

A controversial treatment shows promise, especially for victims of trauma.

It’s straight out of a cartoon about hypnosis: A black-cloaked charlatan swings a pendulum in front of a patient, who dutifully watches and ping-pongs his eyes in turn. (This might be chased with the intonation, “You are getting sleeeeeepy...”)

Unlike most stereotypical images of mind alteration—“Psychiatric help, 5 cents” anyone?—this one is real. An obscure type of therapy known as EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is gaining ground as a potential treatment for people who have experienced severe forms of trauma.

Here’s the idea: The person is told to focus on the troubling image or negative thought while simultaneously moving his or her eyes back and forth. To prompt this, the therapist might move his fingers from side to side, or he might use a tapping or waving of a wand. The patient is told to let her mind go blank and notice whatever sensations might come to mind. These steps are repeated throughout the session.